As a young reader, I was more of an Ann M. Martin reader than a Matt Christopher one, so I’m not sure if there was a book called “The Pitcher Who Didn’t Get Whiffs” but if there wasn’t, tonight’s game would be great inspiration for it. I’m not sure I’ve seen this through four innings of a big-league game:
George Kirby was looking for a bounceback start after his rough outing in Tampa Bay, but nothing looked right from the start. Despite three balls put in play, Kirby got out of the first cleanly,
thanks partially to a nice running catch by Randy Arozarena in left, but the Cardinals continued to swing the bat aggressively in the second, and Kirby wasn’t able to miss any of them—he had no whiffs, and the Cardinals punished his location mistakes with singles and doubles, getting the bat on the ball again and again. A few well-timed dives from his infielders kept the damage to just two runs, but it was a less than encouraging start, to say the least. This is just too much plate against a team like the Cardinals with the 10th-highest O-zone swing percentage in baseball:
Things didn’t get much better in the third, although Kirby was able to hold the Cardinals off the board thanks to a double play. But he still didn’t record a single whiff, and the exit velocities against him in that inning were 103.9, 110.8, 104.1, and 85.8.
The Mariners did their best to prop up Kirby in the bottom of the inning. Victor Robles led off with a solid line drive single against Cardinals starter Matthew Liberatore, who then walked J.P. Crawford, rendering Robles’s steal of second moot. Rude! So rude that Randy Arozarena decided to pay him back for his rudeness, demolishing this fastball on the plate rudely for a very rude upper tank shot that came fully dressed with all the Randy fixins’:
But those good vibes quickly evaporated as Kirby gave that run right back in another struggle of an inning in the fourth. It should say something about his outing that Kirby didn’t get a whiff until the first batter of the fourth inning—a foul tip at that—although it seemed like things might work out when he also recorded his first strikeout of the day on that same at-bat, getting Nolan Gorman looking at a changeup. But Kirby followed that up by walking Thomas Saggese, and then Pedro Pagés ambushed a first-pitch fastball on the plate for a single that pushed the speedy Saggese to third. Kirby then got his second strikeout of the day, albeit a labored eight-pitch effort against speedster Victor Scott II, and his first swinging one on the slider. However, he couldn’t put away nine-hole hitter José Fermin, who in a 3-1 count hit a ball that bounced off third base that he was able to beat out despite an excellent throw from Eugenio Suárez at third, allowing the tying run to score.
But again the Mariners offense picked up Kirby, answering right back in the bottom of the inning, again via the longball. Liberatore made a mistake to Naylor, leaving a sinker right over the plate, and Naylor did not miss it:
If Josh Naylor doesn’t fire you up I don’t know what to tell you. Naylor for his part felt the electricity in the ballpark; postgame he said Willson Contreras commented on the atmosphere in the ballpark, calling it “electric”:
“And I’m like, yeah. It honestly really is. The fans get so excited. They get pumped up in big moments. It’s kind of unexplainable. It’s super cool to be a part of. Sometimes you kind of feel the ground shaking, it’s so loud. Sometimes you can’t hear your own thoughts because it’s so loud. And that’s what you want, that’s what you want to play in.”
Although, please don’t kill any of your teammates with a line-drive bat flip, Josh.
Liberatore followed that up by walking Mitch Garver and then giving up back-to-back singles to Robles and J.P. Crawford; Garver then trotted home on a Randy sac fly that wasn’t quite as dramatic as his homer, but still brought a run across.
That extra run would be important, because things tightened up in the game after that. With Kirby laboring through 85 pitches, Dan Wilson went to his bullpen in the fifth, bringing in Caleb Ferguson. No bat-misser himself, Ferguson nonetheless opened by striking out a tough lefty in Alec Burleson on a cutter, struck out a freshly-returned-from-suspension Willson Contreras, and retired Nolan Gorman on a hard-hit ball but directly at Robles.
Although his pitch count wasn’t as intense, the Cardinals also opted to lift Liberatore in the fifth, bringing in Kyle Leahy, who put down the Mariners 1-2-3 despite giving up some loud and hard contact to Julio Rodríguez. Eduard Bazardo answered back with a scoreless sixth, freezing Saggese on a perfectly-spotted sinker and getting two more easy flyouts for an easy breezy inning.
The Mariners got some traffic against Leahy, working another inning in the sixth, but weren’t able to push anything across—not against Leahy, or Jorge Alcala in the seventh, or Nick Raquet also in the seventh, or Raquet again in the eighth, or Ryan Fernandez, also in the eighth, despite getting traffic on against all of those pitchers. The bright side here is that these outs weren’t made by strikeouts, because the Mariners only struck out five times tonight—as many times as they walked!—committing to the bit. But unfortunately with those balls finding gloves, they still left eight on base. That’s a bummer, but not as much of a bummer as multiple mid-inning pitching changes. Gross. I’ll see you in court, Mr. Marmol.
Meanwhile, Bazardo was followed by Gabe Speier, who worked a clean inning, but not without some drama. Speier retired his first batter easily, but then made a risky pitch to leadoff man Lars Nootbar, leaving a fastball on the plate that Nootbar hit somewhat hard but right at Randy in left. The trainers and manager Dan Wilson came out after that to look at Speier, who was apparently suffering an upset stomach, but said he could pitch to another hitter. Ivan Herrera jumped on a 97 mph first-pitch fastball and hit it very hard, and not right at Julio in center, but Julio showed again why the Gold Glove for center field should be residing in his trophy case this winter:
That’s 105 off the bat and an .800 xBA instead finding glove. “Anytime I can help the pitchers out a little bit, even defensively, that’s huge,” said Julio postgame. “It’s huge because we can cut out their momentum right there, and just bring it all to us.”
Like Speier, Matt Brash also had to work a back-to-back day against the heart of the Cardinals order; a trickier proposition for Brash, who’s been limited in that area as he’s returned from surgery. But Brash was maybe as sharp as he’s been, pounding the strike zone and striking out the side despite allowing a ground ball single just out of the reach of a diving J.P. Crawford (which can be blamed on the wave starting up right at that moment). Fun fact: in his one inning of work, Matt Brash recorded the highest number of whiffs in today’s game, with five. I guess Brash was also more of a Babysitter’s Club reader than a Matt Christopher fan.
With the Mariners squandering another opportunity to get some insurance in the eighth, Andrés Muñoz was also called upon for another day of work. He got a little help from Josh Naylor, first in the form of this perfectly-executed play:
and later in the inning, when Naylor did most of the talking during a mound visit after Muñoz went down 1-0 in the count against Scott, the eight-hole hitter. Postgame, Naylor said the chat was about postgame plans. “Just some conversation to keep it light…it’s kind of like a little reverse psychology, I guess, not talking about baseball or talking about the situation, more just calming each other down, having a casual conversation.”
Keepin’ it casual worked: Muñoz struck out Scott looking at 98 but then lost a battle against Fermín, the nine-hole hitter, who scratched and clawed through a plate appearance against Matilda’s Dad and was rewarded with a line-drive base hit. But no panic from Muñoz despite the lineup turning over; he executed a perfect sinker at the bottom of the zone for a game-ending groundout from Nootbar which had us all feeling like the still from this highlight:
Please also note here the speed with which Naylor untucks his jersey, three steps off first after recording the out (taking off your work clothes ASAP, so relatable), and a nifty play by Jorge Polanco through traffic on that groundout, as well as Andrés’s relief face. Given how this game started, that’s a similar look Mariners fans are wearing—especially after the Astros got walked off by the Blue Jays tonight to draw Seattle a game closer to the AL West and help them keep pace in the Wild Card race. We’ll trade whiffs for wins any day.
